Making coffee.
Sunday September 9, 2001
Intended to stay up late last night to finish work on this week’s Ruthie pages, but I was literally—yes, in the literal sense—too tired to focus on the computer. Kept trying to open programs that were already open, like turning the key of a car already running. So I’m up early this morning to bat some clean-up and get it all wrapped up for the weekly turn-over. Then, more Yard Work. And then, if I’m lucky, a few hours in which I can write, before stumbling into bed like a felled ox (again) to get up early tomorrow and go once more to the Day Job to do it all over for someone else. (Working for a monthly magazine; this coming week, we’re in production.)
So of course I’m taking ten minutes with my fresh cup of coffee to natter on about nothing much, not even (ostensibly) what this blog is about.
Yard Work: I dislike it; I once, when young, swore a mighty oath Never to Mow the Grass Again, when I had such control over my life and personal fortunes that I could make such decisions stick. But having bought a house, I’ve pretty much let that one slide, too. —At least I can use a push mower, so not only do I not have to put up with the smell and the noise, but I can feel smug about being better for the environment than my neighbors. Who are all lovely people, really.
It was the chopping that got to us, though. Hacking out the old, tangled, mostly dead screen of arbor vitæ along the back fence and chopping it all into bits that could fit in the 10-yard yard debris drop-box we’ve rented. Playing John Henry—why did we say John Henry? It’s Paul Bunyan, dammit—with the dull mattock on the big thick ones that weren’t nearly as dead as they looked. It’s all gone now, but me and the Spouse and the tenant from downstairs were left staggering around, drooping, exhausted, wrung out. So I couldn’t stay up late last night to finish Ruthie. So I’m committing a horrible sin: waking up early on Sunday to,well, work.
Coffee’s good. Saw State and Main last night (instead of working, which prompted the idea of trying to stay awake, which led to having to be up early this AM); recommended. The squirrels in the attic are rampaging this morning, and Something Must Be Done about them (I keep wanting to call the landlord, until I remember—oh, yeah), but until then, they keep the cats preoccupied. And yesterday we got the fig tree and the pomegranate tree that the Spouse ordered, so we can plant them today, in our newly cleaned back yard. —They came in a box, the trees did. In the mail. I’m still boggled at that. Trees. In a box. Through the mail. Express mail, but still. Trees. In a box. They look great. Fig tree even has some little figs; the pomegranate has one lovely little flower, that, I presume, will someday become a pomegranate. Not really sure how those work. Yet.
So. A portrait of the eroticist at dawn. A couple of hours after dawn, really. But who’s counting?